Google’s New AI: Bard

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Trish and Rob

 

Google is developing its own AI – Bard – and tonight I had a chance to use it. My question: What is synchronicity?

The answer fits.

Synchronicity is a concept that was first introduced by Carl Jung, a Swiss
psychologist. It is the meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where
something other than the probability of chance is involved. The event is
meaningful because what happens in the external world is mirroring
something happening in your internal world.

For example, you might be thinking about a friend you haven’t seen in a
long time, and then you run into them on the street. Or you might have a
dream about a certain place, and then you find yourself visiting that place
in real life.

Jung believed that synchronicity was a way for the universe to communicate
with us. He thought that it could be a sign of our intuition, or our
connection to something greater than ourselves.

Synchronicity is often seen as a spiritual phenomenon, but it can also be
seen as a psychological one. Jung believed that synchronicity could help us
to understand our inner selves and to connect with the world around us.

Whether you believe in synchronicity or not, it can be a fascinating and
thought-provoking concept. It can make us wonder about the nature of
reality and our place in the universe.

So will we, as a society, eventually censor AIs because we don’t like their answers? Here in Florida, Governor DeSantis is banning any mention of Blacks and the Civil Rights history because it might make white kids, well, uncomfortable. So I asked the Bard AI: Who was Rosa Parks? I asked because one publisher of school texts books has already removed any reference to her as  a black woman.

Rosa Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.

Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was raised by her grandparents after her parents separated when she was two years old. Parks attended Booker T. Washington High School, where she was a member of the NAACP and the National Association of Colored Women.

In 1932, Parks married Raymond Parks, a barber and NAACP activist. The couple moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1943. Parks worked as a seamstress and NAACP secretary.
On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding a bus home from work when she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. Parks refused, and she was arrested and fined.

Her arrest sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted for more than a year. The boycott ended with the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional.

Parks’s act of defiance helped to launch the modern civil rights movement. She became a national symbol of the struggle for equality, and she was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1979.

Parks died on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92. She was the first woman to lie in honor in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

Rosa Parks was a courageous and determined woman who fought for equality and justice for all Americans. Her legacy will continue to inspire people around the world for generations to come.

Ronnie boy DeSantis won’t like the Bard AI’s response to this question.

 

 

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Jupiter

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Trish and Rob

Labels added to this visible-light Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter point out several atmospheric features on the planet, including a ‘brown barge’, four hot spots (which appear bright in the infrared image from Gemini North), a superstorm, the Great Red Spot, and Red Spot Jr. (also known as Oval BA).

First, happy birthday to Rob! And lucky Rob! He’s a Taurus with a Taurus rising and today Jupiter enters his sign. This is what that means:

Today, at 1:20 PM EDT and 10:20 AM Pacific, Jupiter enters  Taurus, where it will be until May 25 2024.  Jupiter is the planet that represents expansion, luck, good fortune. It rules Sagittarius, co-rules Pisces, and governs higher education, the higher mind, synchronicity, foreign countries, cultures, and people. Its year-long transit through Taurus  should benefit all earth signs and water signs Pisces and Cancer. You Scorpios will be experiencing a Jupiter opposition, which means you take on too many responsibilities that realistically, you may find it difficult to juggle everything!

If your natal Jupiter is in Taurus, then you’ll be entering a Jupiter return, which occurs every 11.6 years – call it 12. The last time Jupiter was in Taurus was in 2011-2012., so look back at that period and think about what was happening in your life then. Did your life expand in some way? A move, a baby, a marriage, a huge raise… The Jupiter return year is usually terrific – prosperous and expansive.

Whatever sign you are, take a look at your natal chart to see where Taurus falls. You can get a copy of your natal chart here.  The house where Taurus falls in your chart will be the area that undergoes the most expansion and good fortune. If it falls on your ascendant, the doorway to your chart, the place where you entered this life, you’re in for a double treat. So  Rob, it’s going to be fun!

Here’s a quick reference on what the houses govern.

 

 

 

 

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The Mystical Underground: Salicrow: Spirit Speaker

Posted on May 14, 2023 by Trish and Rob

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Salicrow: Spirit Speaker”:

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Salicrow is a psychic medium and author who weaves the traditions of her Irish Traveler and Blackfoot heritage with modern magical techniques. For more than 30 years, she has worked as a spirit channel, seer, and intuitive healer, offering readings and teaching workshops throughout the United States and internationally. Salicrow’s new book is called SPIRIT SPEAKER: A Medium’s Guide to Death and Dying. It’s also an excellent guide to the afterlife, which we’ll be talking about. Welcome Salicrow

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Ah, Mercury

Posted on May 13, 2023 by Trish and Rob

 

Tomorrow, May 14 at 11:17 p.m. Eastern and 8:17 p.m. Pacific, Mercury turns direct in Taurus. I don’t know about you, but this retro has been a monster for me. Snafus in communications, revisions on a novel, missed opportunities. Whenever some oddball thing went askew, I’d mutter, “Merc retro. Deep breaths.”

Sometimes it helped, most of the time it didn’t.

The good news is the next Mercury retro doesn’t happen again until August 23- September 15 and it will be in earth sign Virgo.

Then, the 4th Mercury retro of the year begins on December 12 and takes us into the new year. It ends on January 1, 2024, in Sagittarius.

 

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The Trickster’s Joke on George Santos

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Trish and Rob

 

Politics often deliver some interesting synchronicities. On May 10, George Santos was indicted on 13 federal counts that included 7 counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, according to the Justice Department.
The theft of public funds involved unemployment beginning in 2020 by applying for unemployment benefits that were made available to out-of-work people during the pandemic.

According to NBC News:

“Santos applied for the money even though he was employed as the regional director of a Florida-based investment firm, where he earned an annual salary of $120,000, according to the indictment.
“He falsely claimed that he had been unemployed since March 2020, the Justice Department alleged. From then to April 2021, when Santos was receiving a salary, he “falsely affirmed each week that he was eligible for unemployment benefits when he was not,” it said.

“As a result, Santos allegedly fraudulently received more than $24,000 in unemployment insurance benefits,” the Justice Department said.

Now here’s the trickster synchro. Santos recently co-sponsored a bill, the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act, which aims to recover fraudulent unemployment payments made during the pandemic.

Apparently, thee universe really does have a sense of humor!

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Life Imitating Art: a Different Kind of Dark Trickster

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes the dark trickster is so in your face it leaves you nearly breathless.

Back in 2013, the news about the death of Paul Walker, 40, was all over Reddit and other sites.

Walker starred in the Fast and Furious franchise, the first of which was released in 2001.
Walker played an undercover detective in 5 of the 6 films about illegal street racing and heists. He died as a passenger in a friend’s Porsche while en route to a charity event to aid Filipino victims of the recent typhoon.  Apparently, the driver was speeding in an area known for racing and struck a streetlight. The car was demolished and engulfed in flames.
The first fire rescue team to get there pronounced both men dead within two minutes of arriving.

It’s easy to see the eerie similarities between Walker’s fictional life and the real life incident that ended his life. When these two worlds collide for actors, the defining event can be startling and deadly. Since actors essentially live the role they are playing,  even if for a short time, the stage is literally set for them to attract synchronicity through the dark trickster. While these occurrences are rare, when they do occur, they shock us and we might pause to wonder about the deeper mechanisms of reality. Here are some other tragic incidents involving actors that reflected their work:

Christopher Reeves. His last role before the horseback riding accident that paralyzed him was that of a paraplegic. A few hours after the first news conference about his accident, HBO aired—as previously scheduled—a film starring Reeve that had debuted only a week earlier: Above Suspicion. Reeve played a police officer who was paralyzed after being shot in the line of duty.

Brandon Lee. He died while filming a scene in his last movie, The Crow. In the scene, he discovers his girlfriend being raped by thugs who kill both of them. Funboy, one of the film’s villains, fired a gun at Brandon’s character as he walked into his apartment. The gun was loaded with blanks, but a dummy cartridge had lodged in the barrel and the detonation of a blank propelled it through the barrel, killing Brandon at point-blank range.

Bruce Lee. Eighteen years earlier, Brandon’s father died on the set of another movie, ironically called, The Death Game. Both Bruce and Brandon were playing characters who died and then returned to life. Both deaths were ruled accidental, though highly suspicious. The dark trickster was present at the end of both of their lives.

David Carradine. He played a deadly swordsman, the head of a family of assassins, in Quenten Taratino’s Kill Bill movies, and died in 2004 in a luxury hotel room in Bangkok during the filming Kill Bill Volume 2. He supposedly hung himself, but may have died accidentally in a dangerous sexual act.

Heath Ledger. The dark trickster also came to play in the death of Ledger. At age 28, he was already a legend, an Oscar nominee for his role in Brokeback Mountain. He had just completed filming his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. The movie made box office history, Ledger was praised for his portrayal of the dark character and won an Oscar for his performance. Unfortunately, he died of an accidental overdose of prescription medication six months before the release of the movie. Ironically, Ledger played the role of the dark trickster himself.

Life imitating art: another version of dark trickster.

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The Blue Ridge Synchro

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Trish and Rob

 

Not long after we had author and UFO researcher Preston Dennett on our podcast, I asked Preston where he’d moved when he’d left L.A. Turns out he’d moved to Blue Ridge, Georgia, where my sister and her husband, Neal, have a weekend home. I told him we were going to be visiting them in a few weeks and suggested we get together for lunch. The synchronicity struck me as significant. Of all the places he might have moved, it just happened to be this rural town in Georgia where we were headed.

So on the Sunday of our visit, we met Preston at a local restaurant in downtown Blue Ridge. Surprisingly, Dolly Saffron was with him. She’s a lifelong abductee featured in Preston’s book Symmetry, and her story is fascinating. Dolly has an eidectic memory and recalls being abducted for the first time when she was 10 months old – being floated out of her crib. Since then, she has had numerous abductions and that included being taught how to fly a UFO craft.

Yes, it sounds out there. But when you hear Dolly talk about her experiences, she exudes such authenticity that it’s difficult to dismiss what she says. But I hope she’s wrong about what she foresees about the planet’s future.According to Dolly, the aliens – whom Whitley Strieber calls the Visitors – have left our galaxy because our planet is about to enter a period of dire chaos due to climate change.

People will get “crazier,” food shortages will become the norm, the rising oceans will obliterate coastal cities and the planet essentially will become uninhabitable. Dolly sees this beginning in about two years, when we will be forced into  survival mode, and continuing for  eight years. She and Preston have a greenhouse and are now starting to grow their own food. They are preparing to live off the grid. At the end of this period, the aliens will return, Dolly said, and take survivors to another galaxy. Earth will be uninhabitable.

When I related all this to my sister, who is on the fence about UFOs, her response was: “I don’t want to live out the rest of my life in survival mode.”

Neither do we.

I emailed Whitley about meeting Preston and Dolly and mentioned that I hoped her timing was wrong. He replied thast predictions about timing have been wrong and that the point isn’t about survivors being picked up, but about the evolution of souls.

Given all the chaos and violence in the world, the evolution of souls sounds like a welcome change

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The Mystical Underground: Rob MacGregor: TUPLAS (Redux)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Trish and Rob

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Rob MacGregor: TUPLAS (Redux)”:

Join Rob as he reads an excerpt from his fiction novel…TULPAS!

“Inception meets Westworld in an original SF novel about a parallel universe only a dream away.In Tibetan Buddhism, tulpas are human-like creatures created through deep meditation. In this compelling story, tulpas take over the sub-conscious world in a parallel universe—where they quickly become invincible. For Bruce Lang and Risa Ferraro, on this side of that dream world, the tulpa army is just a puzzling nightmare. But for their counterparts on the other side, Alex Brooks and Lydia Cabrera, the tulpa army—Dominion—is far too real. As the states of reality and dreams converge in an inevitable clash that may destroy all consciousness in both universes, the four must band together to save what is left of reality.”

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Rights? Freedoms?

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Trish and Rob

 

Stating the obvious, our rights and freedoms are being eroded. First, it was the overturn of Roe by the supreme court. This isn’t about protecting the unborn. It never was. After all, once you’re born in this country, you’re guaranteed citizenship but oops, not much else else. No guaranteed health care or child care. No guaranteed parental leave for parents. You’re basically on your own. And oh, once you begin your education, you may experience a school shooting because the 2nd amendment is apparently sacrosanct in this country.
Abortion always has been about controlling women – and is now being taken to extremes.

From CNBC on April 27, 2023:

The Supreme Court last week upheld Food and Drug Administration regulations that permit easy access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

A legal battle over the medication and its FDA rules is still playing out in a federal appeals court.

Despite the decision, mifepristone will remain largely unavailable in 13 states that banned abortion since the federal right to abortion established in the case Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer by the Supreme Court.

Fourteen other states have laws that restrict how mifepristone is used or dispensed.

How would men react if their access to Viagra or condoms was restricted or banned by the government?

What gives the government the right to interfere with a woman’s health care? With the decisions a woman makes about her own body?

This ban goes right along with the banning of books, the suppression of voting rights, the targeting of the LBGTQ+ community. Any time one of your “inalienable” rights is banned, take a look at republicans. This is their agenda- it’s called Fascism.

From CBS News on the banning of books:

“During the 2021-2022 school year, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries. The bans affected 138 school districts in 32 states, according to a report from PEN America, an organization dedicated to protecting free expression in literature. “

And every year, the number of bans increase. Texas and Florida now lead the nation in book bans. Ron DeSantis, the The Florida governor – the same guy who is trying to take on Mickey Mouse because Disney came out in favor of the LBGTQ+ community- seems to find particular perverse delight in telling students what they can and can’t read. No, No, Charlotte’s Web might corrupt and poison a young mind. And oh my God, Harry Potter is about wizards and magic. Ban it, ban it. 

“Many of the new restrictions come from a law passed last year that requires trained media specialists to evaluate each school book to ensure it is age-appropriate and free of “pornographic” content. The law also requires schools to keep a searchable online database of the books in their libraries and classrooms.

“Proposed legislation goes further. In March, the Florida House passed a bill that could require schools to remove a book promptly based on a single complaint from a parent or county resident that the book depicted sexual conduct. Under the proposed bill, the book would remain unavailable until the complaint was resolved.”

Take a look at some of the banned titles.

DeSantis also has revamped black history. Can’t have anything in the curriculum, folks, that might make white kids and their parents feel guilty about….well, take your pick. Slavery, the right to vote, the killing of George Floyd.… You get the idea here. Best to keep people oblivious  about their true history. We can’t allow young people to know the truth.

So what can you, a single individual, do to counteract all this? To help turn things around so that we really are equal in every sense of the word?

Vote, of course. But what else?

Start with your expertise. Are you a good writer? Speaker? Organizer? Speak out. Protest.  Never remain silent. If you’re a teacher in a state like Florida, stand  up for your rights as an educator, for your students’ rights to be educated. Speak your truth. Join an organization with  voice that’s heard.  If we don’t stand up, folks, then we may find ourselves ruled by autocrats whose religion and beliefs become law, which is already happening. Fortunately, there are still blue states that are holdouts of freedom and democracy.

But for how long? With a supreme court that apparently can do what it wants, without any ethical restraints or eversights,  our days of inalienable rights may be on a countdown to the 2024  election.

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Synchronicity as a Kind of Alchemy

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Trish and Rob

This book by Richard Tarnas remains one of my favorites.

Synchronicity is a  kind of alchemy that transforms us or a decision we’re making in an essential way. The alchemy occurs because of what the synchronicity says to you, its impact on you. This was certainly the case for Carl Jung during a visit in the 1950s with Henry Fierz, a chemistry professor with whom he had become friends over the years. This story came from  the Tarnas book.

Friez had dropped by at five o’clock one afternoon to talk with Jung about a manuscript by a scientist who had recently died. Friez felt the manuscript should be published, but Jung, who had read it, thought otherwise.  Their debate about the manuscript apparently became somewhat heated and at one point, Jung glanced at his watch, as if he were about to dismiss Friez.  Then he seemed puzzled by the time and explained that his watch had just been returned from the repair shop, but it read five o’clock, the time that Friez had arrived.

Jung asked Friez the time; it was 5:35. As Richard Tarnas recounted the incident in Psyche and Cosmos, Jung apparently said, “So you have the right time, and I have the wrong time. Let us discuss the thing again.”

In the ensuing discussion, Friez convinced Jung the manuscript should be published. “Here, the synchronistic event is of interest not because of its intrinsic coincidental force,” Tarnas wrote,  “but because of the meaning Jung drew from it, essentially using it as a basis for challenging and redirecting his own conscious attitude.”

Many of us might not draw a correlation between a stopped watch and a discussion. But synchronicity, by definition, is the coming together of similar inner and outer events in a way that is meaningful to the individual and can’t be explained by cause and effect. This means that the outer world – and all of nature and our surroundings – can carry meaning just as the inner world does. Jung, who was accustomed to perceiving and thinking symbolically, recognized the synchronicity and changed his thinking accordingly.

Tarnas noted that Jung recognized all events as “sources of potential and spiritual significance.” It didn’t matter to him whether they originated from human consciousness or from the “larger matrix of the world” because he saw nature and a person’s surrounding environment as a living template of “potential synchronistic meaning that could illuminate the human sphere. He attended to sudden or unusual movements or appearances of animals, flocks of birds, the wind, storms, the sudden louder lapping of the lake outside his the window of his consulting room…as possible symbolic relevance for the parallel unfolding of interior psychological realities.”

In other words, Jung used everything in his environment as potential signs and symbols. It seems that once you recognize coincidence as meaningful, once you’re in the flow of it, the inner self and the larger outer matrix chatter constantly to each other. We only have to listen.

I’m trying to do that more consistently!

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